The Devil Wears Prada
by LemurLovexx
Summary: When Gabriella Montez gets a job at Runway magazine working for the ruthless editor-in-cheif Sharpay Evans will she let her new job change who she is and leave herself behind? Or will she stay true to herself? *Based on the movie The Devil Wears Prada.


The Devil Wears Prada:

**a fan fiction**

_**Author's Note: I am not the creator of any of the characters that are in this story I am simply a fan of _The Devil Wears Prada _and _High School Musical _and thought it would be cool if the two worlds were brought together. Enjoy.**_

_Chapter_ One

Walking up the front walk of The Hearst Corporation on 8th avenue twenty three year old Gabriella Montez had to take a moment to stop and glance up at the large glass skyscraper in front of her. Once she averted her gaze from the seemingly never-ending tower she felt a surge of electricity run through her veins, encouraging her forward as she pushed open the front door to one of the largest publishing companies in New York City. The Hearst Corporation was home to numerous magazines including _Good Housekeeping_, _O The Oprah Magazine_, and _Cosmopolitan_, but one of the most pristine and best-known magazines to any woman who could afford a New York City townhouse and still have money left over to buy a whole new wardrobe was _Runway Magazine_. Gabriella was reporting for a job interview, quite reluctantly seeing as all Gabriella wanted to do was to be a journalist and write about the issues that everyone cared about. And that did _not _include the latest fashion trends or what Beyoncé was wearing at the last Golden Globes. Her choices to start off in the journalistic world were slim to none so she didn't even bother to complain and instead put on her best skirt, an old pink blouse, and a badge blazer and headed into her interview.

Gabriella walked into The Hearst Tower only to have her sudden sense of confidence falter slightly as she looked around her at the vast red marble lobby. There was a long row of reception desks behind which sat men and women dressed in dark navy suits; the men each had on the same blue and red striped tie and the women all had the same up-tight hair-do. The lobby was also littered with large metal pillars as well as the pure hustle and bustle that seemed to fill every building in New York City. As Gabriella took a step forward toward the reception desk she heard a few sudden pinging noises fill the air and she stepped back, thinking she had triggered an alarm of some sort. It turned out, though, that it was only the set up of golden entrance emitters right before the elevators. You must swipe a card through these devises, that the receptionists give you, to get granted permission to use the elevators, and whenever one is used a pinging sound is released into the air amidst the rest of the turmoil that filled the busy lobby. Once Gabriella realized this she let out a breath that she hadn't even realized that she had been holding in and started back toward the front desk.

After being helped by an energetic woman named Jean, Gabriella made her way over to the elevators, quickly swiped her card, and smiled to herself as she heard the ping float off into the air as she climbed into an open elevator and hit the button for the forty-third floor.

The elevator ride was a quiet one, the only things that Gabriella heard during her ride were the cries of bickering children tagging along with their mother as she went to sign some papers in her office and the classical elevator music, which seemed muffled and static-filled. By the time the elevator had reached the forty-third floor most of the people making up the contents of the small silver box had filtered out, leaving only Gabriella and a middle aged man dressed in a charcol suit with deep black hair which was starting to gray at the roots. Once the doors slid open, smoothly, Gabriella smiled politely over at the man before stepping out of the elevator and into a long white hallway, which seemed like it lead to the waiting room of heaven. It was a pure white; the walls and the floor were all covered in a shiny white paint that was enhanced by the pools of sunshine that spilled into the corridor through the large bay windows on Gabriella's left hand side. Quickly recovering from her sudden distraction, Gabriella shook her head and re-focused her attention on the reason she was at The Hearst Corporation.

_Job interview, Gabriella, focus! _Gabriella thought to herself as she straightened up and started to walk down the seemingly endless corridor to the set of four glass doors each had an identical line of R's running through the middle of them in frosted glass. Once she was in front of the doors Gabriella took a deep breath, smoothed a hand over her slightly coarse hair, put on a smile, and walked into a vast white reception area, quite similar to the hallway before it except behind the receptionist's desk was a large set of silver letters that together spelled out the word RUNWAY in obvious pride.

"Maybe I help you?" the red head that sat behind the large desk asked Gabriella, looking up at her with a pair of large emerald green eyes that were caked with eyeliner and dark gray eye-shadow. Gabriella's smile widened, out of insecurity and instinct. She knew she was supposed to be confident and even if she didn't feel like it she might as well _look_ the part.

"Um, yes actually," Gabriella said before unlatching her mother's old briefcase, sifting through her numerous article clippings that she herself had written for a small white sheet of paper with her interview information on it. "I have an appointment with, uh… Kelsi Nielsen?" Gabriella said, her statement coming out as more of a question as she tried to pronounce the stranger's last name. The receptionist smiled widely back at Gabriella, picked up the phone beside her, and quickly dialed a number before muttering into the phone that Kelsi's next appointment was here.

"She'll be only a minute." The girl said to Gabriella before turning back to her computer. Gabriella turned around to look for a place to sit, thinking that there was a waiting area of some sort but there was no such thing to be found. Before she could turn to question the young receptionist a new voice filled the air, and it sounded slightly disgusted.

"Gabriella Montez?" Gabriella turned around to see who had addressed her. Only to have her eyes fall on a petite woman with curly light brown hair and dazzling gray-blue eyes, which were played up with dramatically long curled eyelashes and a bit of eyeliner. The woman was dressed in a pair of form-fitting skinny jeans tucked into a pair of black high-heeled Gucci boots, topped off with silk Calvin Klein baby-doll top that Gabriella remembered seeing in SoHo priced around a hundred dollars.

"Yes?" Gabriella asked, her voice cracking slightly seeing as this woman definitely intimidated her with the fierce look in her eyes and her obvious hunger for success and no bullshit policy. The woman let out a sarcastic laugh, Gabriella just knew it was sarcastic. She had been on the receiving end of enough forced and fake laughs in high school to know what a sarcastic laugh sounded like.

"Ha! Great! Human Resources has a pretty sick sense of humor," the woman's soft face suddenly hardened and her smile disappeared, "Now, follow me." Before Gabriella could collect her thoughts, this woman, who still hadn't identified herself, turned around and started out of the reception area and into another long white hallway lit up by sunshine.

"Um," Gabriella said, as she quickly shuffled after this woman, trying to fall in step with her, "I don't think that I caught your name back there…"

"Kelsi Nielsen." Kelsi said, "Now, down to business. We need someone who can survive here. Do you understand me, Gabriella? It's pretty much a mad house here currently because we are preparing for Fashion Week in Paris and I have just been promoted to first assistant." Kelsi said as she continued down the hallway with Gabriella trailing behind her.

"Oh, so you're replacing yourself?" Gabriella inquired, coaxing her head to the side. Kelsi simply nodded her head as she continued to walk down the hall.

"Yes, and I'm having one hell of a time doing it, too. Sharpay's completely sacked the last few girls that I sent her." She said as she pushed open another set of glass doors, similar to the ones Gabriella saw when she first walked in.

"Oh, I see. Who's Sharpay?" Gabriella asked as she grabbed a mass of her long ebony curls and tossed them over her shoulder. The way Kelsi had tossed her curly hair over her shoulder had seemed a lot more graceful, but Gabriella didn't have much time to think about it because in the next few seconds Kelsi attacked her.

"Oh my _God!_ I can't believe you just asked me that! Sharpay is the editor-in-chief of this magazine. The very heart and soul of fashion! Not to mention a legend. Get a job working for her and you can get a job working for any magazine you want… _Rolling Stone, Time_. You name it." Kelsi babbled on angrily as she turned to face Gabriella who had stopped in her tracks abruptly, suddenly even more scared of Kelsi then she already was. However, the thoughts running through Gabriella's mind weren't focused so much on Kelsi as they were on what she had just said. _Being able to get a job anywhere?! To write for _any _magazine?! This could be it! This could be my big break! _

"Well," Gabriella said softly, timidly crossing her arms over her chest, an insecure habit she had picked up in high school, "I'd love to be considered."

"Considered for what?" Kelsi asked having been distracted by someone thrusting a paper into her hands. Gabriella shook her head, causing her long dark tendrils to shake back and forth.

"The job. It sounds like a great opportunity."

Kelsi turned and looked at Gabriella, a slight look of disgust twisted onto her face for a brief few seconds and then she put on a bittersweet smile.

"Gabriella, _Runway_ is a _fashion_ magazine. So some sort of knowledge of fashion is required." Gabriella was taken aback by Kelsi's statement. Sure, Gabriella wasn't the most fashionable of women but she was fine with that. Everyone had they're own style and Gabriella was perfectly content with her style of bargain priced jeans, plaid skirts, and pure cotton sweaters from Macy's.

"What makes you think I don't know anything about fashion?" Gabriella asked, putting on a smile as she tried to prove to more herself then to Kelsi that she was confident. The corners of Kelsi's lips curled up into a wicked grin but right before she opened her mouth to respond to Gabriella's question her cell phone beeped wildly.

Kelsi simply flipped out her phone only to suddenly start to break down.

"No! No! No! This can't happen!" she hollered before running off without even so much as an 'excuse me' or an explanation. Gabriella turned and looked after the fleeting figure of her interviewer.

"What's wrong?" she asked, confusedly, more to herself then to anyone else, seeing as everyone was freaking out along with Kelsi. Who had raced out of the hallway where Gabriella currently stood and into another wide office and picked up a phone that sat a top one of the only two desks that filled the room.

"She is on her way! No, I'm not joking, Nathan! Tell everyone!" Kelsi said sternly into the receiver just as Gabriella walked through the door. Her face was still scrunched up in confusion as she made her way over to the desk across from Kelsi. Just as Gabriella came to a stop at the desk a man walked through one of the side doors of the office and walked over to Kelsi with a sense of ease.

"You said she wasn't supposed to be back until four." The man said as he grabbed a few papers that were splayed on the desk. As he began to walk away Kelsi placed the phone back down onto the receiver and turned to look at him.

"Yeah, well her facialist canceled at the last minute. Some _family emergency_, God these people!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air out of utter frustration. The man shrugged understandingly and then turned to make his way back out of the room when he caught sight of Gabriella, who was reading over her résumé, suddenly bored and in need of some sort of entertainment. The man looked over Gabriella while her attention was focused somewhere else. He took in her slightly matted long ebony hair and the way that it simply hung against her back, looking stiff. He tried to see if the woman sitting before him had any possession of womanly curves or legs, but he simply could not tell because of her frumpy, and slightly manly, blazer and her heavy cotton tights and leather loafers. As the man's eyes landed on her loafers his face twisted into horror. _No _woman should ever wear scoffed up old leather loafers to an interview with Sharpay Evans… no woman should wear scoffed up old leather loafers period!

The man whistled to get Kelsi's attention and she turned around swiftly. 'What?' she mouthed to him, obviously annoyed. The man simply held the papers in his hand up to shield his face from Gabriella's view and mouthed back, 'Who's that?'

"_That?_" Kelsi said pointing, not so subtly at Gabi, "I can't even talk about." Gabriella's head shot up as the man turned and left without a word. As Gabi looked behind her to watch him walk off, Kelsi got another text message. She then turned to start out of the room, but as a last thought she turned and looked back at Gabi. "Stay here and… don't _touch_ anything, alright?" Gabriella opened her mouth to say something in response but Kelsi was gone before she could ever pronounce the first letter and the door closed, slowly, behind her.

As Gabriella took a seat at the desk she had been standing by the doors to the elevator that she had obtained mere moments ago slid open once more to reveal another woman. This woman was tall with lusciousgolden hair that fell down to the small of her back and seemed to radiate sunshine naturally, even though the skies of Manhattan had become cloudy. As she stepped out of the elevator she slipped off her large Chanel sunglasses to reveal her large brown eyes and open up her face, accenting her plump pink lips that constantly seemed to be in a pout. The woman continued to walk down the hallway as if it were the runway in a Versace fashion show, which it might as well have been seeing as she wore a heavy fur coat over a plain, yet very expensive, white blouse along with a white Michael Kors pencil skirt, black see-through tights, and a pair of hot red Prada stilettos.

This was Sharpay Evans, Editor-in-Chief of _Runway_.


End file.
